Toronto, Ontario — In this week’s Tuesday Ticker, Toyota continues its record-breaking results for 2020, Uber reports losses offset by food deliveries and Elon Musk’s brother and Tesla board member gives up a portion of his Tesla shares.
Toyota at the top
Toyota has reported that its quarterly operating profit rose to 987.9 billion yen (US$ 9.45 billion) from 640,097 billion yen a year earlier.
In an earnings statement released last Wednesday, Toyota said its net income rose to 838.7 billion yen (US$8 billion) from 559 billion yen in the three months ending Dec. 31, 2020. Toyota is now expecting record operating profits of 2 trillion yen—or US$19.13 billion—for the fiscal year ending March 31.
Toyota was the world’s top-selling automaker in 2020, unseating Volkswagen from the throne position and beating out the German automaker by 223,038 units.
Uber offsets
Uber has posted significant losses for the fourth quarter of 2020, though the hits were partially offset thanks to the company’s food delivery operations.
Thanks to that offset, the loss of US$968 million was narrowed slightly from US$1.1 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to Uber. Revenue for the quarter was US$3.2 billion—a 16 percent decrease from the same period a year prior.
Uber said its mobility segment, including ridesharing and ridehailing operations, was down 52 percent from a year earlier, while food deliveries saw a revenue jump of 224 percent.
Brothers in business
Kimbal Musk, the brother of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and member of the EV company’s Board of Directors sold company shares worth US$25.6 million last Tuesday, according to filings from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Kimbal Musk sold 30,000 directly owned shares at an average price of US$853 a share. He still holds 599,740 shares in the company, worth about US$483 million.
Tesla’s shares rose 743 percent in 2020 and are up about 14 percent this year.
